Innovation in the US Heartland

Their efforts, including collaborative combinations of regional, state, and individual universities, come as yet another US study, this one by Battelle, found the US still is leading the world in biomedical R&D, but its leadership is “ours to lose” because of the nation’s neglect and failure over the last decade to recognise the reasons for its success and build upon its strengths.

The study was commissioned by the Council for American Medical Innovation. It goes on to outline regulatory and policy obstacles faced by America’s health care industry, saying, “American medical innovation now stands at a crossroads. Our leadership in medical innovation and the health benefits and economic growth that accrue because of it are at risk.”

A recent Brookings Institution policy brief urges the US government to leverage existing assets in the economically hard-hit Midwest, especially the Great Lakes region that includes Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Michigan, Kentucky, West Virginia, western Pennsylvania, and western New York. Brookings called the Great Lakes a, “research complex for energy innovation,” and urged the government to build on the area’s research and engineering strengths by launching a region-wide network of collaborative, high-intensity energy research and innovation centres.

Brookings said around six regional innovation centres could reasonably be organised in the Great Lakes states with total annual funding between $1 billion and $2 billion. But Midwesterners aren’t waiting for the federal government, and instead are moving ahead with their own brand of ingenuity.

Ignition Park

American innovation wasn’t always a bi-coastal affair, dominated by venture capitalists and Ivy League scientists in start-ups. Indeed, US automakers in the so-called “rust belt” were leading inventors dating back to the 1800s. Henry and Clement Studebaker, for example, in 1852 founded a modest wagon shop in South Bend, Indiana, that evolved into one of the largest independent car companies in the US in the 20th century. South Bend points to other innovators, including Albert Zahm, a University of Notre Dame engineering professor who designed the first modern airplane, 10 years before the Wright brothers’ first flight.

Now the former Studebaker car manufacturing complex is being cleared to start Ignition Park, which will act partly as an area to house successful ventures originating at another recent effort, Innovation Park at Notre Dame, which was launched in October 2009 as a regional high-tech R&D hub. It includes partnerships among the University of Notre Dame, the city of South Bend, Project Future (a regional economic development catalyst), as well as the state of Indiana. Innovation Park includes wet and dry labs, conference rooms, offices, and incubation facilities.

The University of Notre Dame also is home to the Midwest Institute for Nanoelectronics Discovery (MIND), one of four research centres throughout the US focused on developing the next-generation computer chip architecture. The partnership between the city of South Bend and Notre Dame, which includes the city’s $50 million commitment to support commercialisation, reportedly played a role in the decision by Semiconductor Research Corp.’s Nanoelectronics Research Initiative to locate an operation in South Bend.

Established in March, the MIND consortium includes Purdue University, the University of Illinois, Pennsylvania State University, the University of Michigan, Argonne National Laboratory, the National Institute of Standards and Technology, and the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory. Among the industry partners in MIND are GlobalFoundries, IBM Corp., Intel Corp., Micron Technology Inc., and Texas Instruments Inc.

MIND has two themes. One is energy-efficient devices focused on developing graphene transistors based on spin, tunnelling, and thermal rectification; tunnel transistors with low-voltage and low-subthreshold swing; quantum-transport-modelling tools; and engineering energy dissipation in non-equilibrium devices. The second is energy-efficient systems that explore systems architectures to use the novel properties of devices developed within the Nanoelectronics Research Initiative (NRI), such as the core focus area of magnetic cellular automata. Circuit modelling and design for NRI device technology will be used to benchmark and guide the development of technology beyond CMOS.

Reinvesting patent royalties

For its part, the Missouri University of Science and Technology is trying to spark innovation by reinvesting patent earnings into research projects that hold promise to be moved toward commercialisation. The university’s so-called Technology Acceleration Programme (TAP) will provide seed money for commercially viable projects, according to Keith Strassner, director of tech transfer and economic development at the university. The TAP programme is based on the fast track effort launched by the four-campus University of Missouri System that was funded by the state last fiscal year, but that was discontinued after state funding dried up.

So many great ideas end up languishing in the laboratory due to a lack of proof-of-concept funding, Strassner said, so TAP aims to bridge the gap and let researchers further refine promising ideas. He said he’s focusing on ideas the university is pursuing for patent protection, but for which there still is no license.

“We think it’s the right thing to do - to take the money from one invention and invest it in the next one,” Strassner said.

For the first year of the new programme, the university earmarked $75,000 in royalty income and solicited proposals for funding three projects for up to $25,000 each. It received six proposals and funded three, one of which is for developing a prototype for an energy-efficient water heating system. Another is to help a researcher get data on a new specialty glass that could be used to regrow bone and soft tissue. And the third involves developing smart sensor technology to monitor bridges for defects.

The winners were chosen by: strength of intellectual property 20 per cent, disruptive nature of technology 20 per cent, strength/size of the target market 20 per cent, likelihood of a successful product/service resulting from grant 25 per cent, and credentials of the research team 15 per cent.

Nanotech takes hold in Midwest US

The innovation bug has filtered down to two-year, technical colleges as well. Ivy Tech Community College in South Bend, Indiana, will become the first college in that state to offer an associate degree in nanotechnology. Classes are to start in August 2011, and the school is expected to accept 24 students that year with strong math and science backgrounds. The community college is the state’s largest public post-secondary institution with more than 120,000 students enrolled annually.

Previously, the school was involved in nanotech by awarding Nanotech Undergraduate Research Fellowships for selected students to study at the University of Notre Dame. Ivy Tech student research includes working with DNA nanostructures and the adherence of bacteria to nanosurfaces.